The future of Ally McCoist may be finally decided next week after a meeting between the Rangers manager and power brokers at the club failed to produce a deal to allow him to leave Ibrox.
McCoist, who triggered his 12-month notice period last week, is now set to be in charge of the team for the SPFL Championship match against Livingston on Saturday and, crucially, in the manager's seat at what is certain to be a turbulent annual meeting on Monday.
McCoist met Derek Llambias, a club director and associate of shareholder Mike Ashley, and Sandy Easdale, the chairman of the football board of Rangers, at Ibrox today for 40 minutes.
Easdale would only confirm after the meeting that McCoist would remain manager of the club. He would not comment on what would happen after the match against Livingston or whether further talks were planned.
The situation is therefore a stalemate. The club will insist it has no funds to pay off the manager, who triggered the restoration of his original £750,000 salary on submitting his resignation. The 52-year-old is likely to be reluctant to leave without any compensation.
It puts Rangers in the grisly situation of having a manager, who has tendered his resignation, in charge of a team that is lagging behind Hearts in the chase to achieve financial salvation by winning the SPFL Championship and resuming its place in the top tier of the Scottish game.
It adds an unnecessary spice to what promise to be a dramatic agm on Monday. The McCoist situation will be added to the pressing financial matters, the controversy over the involvement of Ashley, owner of Newcastle United, and the probable unveiling of a share issue to address the gaping hole in the club's finances.
Although the McCoist meeting ended with no progress, the club announced yesterday it was to address vigorously two other issues.
The Scottish Football Association has lodged complaints against Rangers and Ashley over the level of influence wielded by the Sports Direct tycoon. A club statement to the Stock Exchange said: "The directors of Rangers will take legal advice with a view to defending the actions of the company and the club robustly in relation to those matters raised by the SFA.''
The club is also to contest a decision by the SPFL to withhold £250,000 of broadcast money due to Rangers. The league body is seeking to recover a fine imposed in February 2013 for the use of employee benefit trust schemes.
An appeal has been lodged with the judicial panel of the SFA. A Rangers statement said: "The board is advised that the payment is not due to SPFL and the appeal will be pursued vigorously.''
The SPFL contends that the sum is owed because of a deal struck that led to the transfer of Rangers' membership of the SFA after administration and then liquidation. It said an agreement has been signed to make Rangers "liable for sums such as this''.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article